Silicon Valley Scrambles After Massive C.I.A. Leak

In what is considered the largest known leak of C.I.A. documents, Wikileaks on Tuesday published 8,761 documents, exposing the inner workings of the agency’s Center for Cyber Intelligence, outlining its secret hacking program, and describing in detail the tools the C.I.A. uses to gain unauthorized access to personal electronics like Android smartphones, iPhones, and even Samsung smart televisions—turning ordinary household objects into espionage devices.

Tech companies, confronted with yet another national-security story highlighting the limits of consumer privacy, sprung into action. “While our initial analysis indicates that many of the issues leaked today were already patched in the latest iOS, we will continue to work rapidly to address any identified vulnerabilities,” an Apple spokesperson said in a statement on Tuesday. Samsung said it was “urgently looking into the matter.”

Device manufacturers are scrambling to assess the risks created by the leak, the Wall Street Journal reports, but that’s difficult to do without more information about the hacking tools involved. Wikileaks hasn’t yet released the computer code for the C.I.A. malware, but that doesn’t mean it won’t eventually. U.S.A. Today reports that the organization, headed up by Julian Assange, will refrain from doing so “until a consensus emerges on the technical and political nature of the C.I.A.’s program.”

Some tech companies, like Google, are confident in the security of their devices, thanks to recent software updates. “As we’ve reviewed the documents, we’re confident that security updates and protections in both Chrome and Android already shield users from many of these alleged vulnerabilities,” Google told the Journal in a statement. “Our analysis is ongoing.” Others, like Cisco, expect Wikileaks to eventually release the malware. In the meantime, without more information, the company says “the scope of action that can be taken by Cisco is limited.”

For Silicon Valley more broadly, the danger isn’t just the potential for hackers to take advantage of the data dump, but the effect the leak has had on the entire industry’s reputation. Tech companies worked hard in the wake of Edward Snowden’s disclosures about the N.S.A. to bolster consumer privacy. Now, it seems those protections were not as strong as they appeared. Wikileaks has claimed that some secure messaging apps, like Signal and Facebook-owned WhatsApp, which use end-to-end encryption, can be easily broken into, undermining a major selling point for those companies. The group also claims that the C.I.A. can break into iPhones, which are thought to be more secure devices than their Android counterparts. (Some security researchers say these claims are exaggerated.)

The Wikileaks dump is also a major blow to the C.I.A., though it remains unclear how much the agency depended upon the tools described in the leaked documents. “For the CIA this is huge loss,” Jake Williams, founder of Rendition Infosec, told the Daily Beast. “For incident responders like me, this is a treasure trove.” Wikileaks has said the documents came from a contractor or former U.S. government employee who was concerned about “whether the CIA’s hacking capabilities exceed its mandated powers.” The C.I.A., which has maintained that it has “no comment” on the authenticity of the new trove of Wikileaks documents, insists that its tools are for foreign cyber-espionage and that it does not target U.S. citizens for surveillance.

Sundar Pichai

Sundar Pichai, Google’s C.E.O., was born in Chennai, India, immigrating to the U.S. to attend Stanford in 1993.

Photo: By Simon Dawson/Bloomberg/Getty Images.

Sergey Brin

Alphabet president and Google co-founder Sergey Brin was born in Moscow and lived in the Soviet Union until he was six, immigrating with his family to the United States in 1979.

Photo: By FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images.

Elon Musk

Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX and Tesla, was born and raised in South Africa. He obtained Canadian citizenship in 1989 and briefly attended college at Queen's University in Ontario. He transferred to University of Pennsylvania, in part because such a move would allow him to get an H-1B visa and stay in the U.S. after college.

Photo: By Justin Chin/Bloomberg/Getty Images.

Safra Catz

Safra Catz, who served as co-C.E.O. of Oracle, was born in Israel. She resigned from her executive role in December after joining Donald Trump’s presidential transition team.

Photo: By David Paul Morris/Bloomberg/Getty Images.

Peter Thiel

Trump supporter Peter Thiel, who has expressed support for the president’s executive action restricting immigration from several predominantly Muslim countries, is an immigrant himself. Before he co-founded PayPal and made one of the earliest large investments in Facebook, Thiel moved with his family from Germany, where he was born. In 2011, he also became a citizen of New Zealand, adding a third passport to his growing collection.

Photo: By Roger Askew/Rex/Shutterstock.

Satya Nadella

Born in Hyderabad, India, Microsoft C.E.O. Satya Nadella came to the U.S. to study computer science, joining Microsoft in 1992.

Photo: By Stephen Brashear/Getty Images.

Garrett Camp

Garrett Camp helped co-found Uber. He was born in Alberta, Canada, and now resides in the Bay Area.

Photo: By Justin Lane/EPA/Rex/Shutterstock.

Sundar Pichai

Sundar Pichai, Google’s C.E.O., was born in Chennai, India, immigrating to the U.S. to attend Stanford in 1993.

By Simon Dawson/Bloomberg/Getty Images.

Sergey Brin

Alphabet president and Google co-founder Sergey Brin was born in Moscow and lived in the Soviet Union until he was six, immigrating with his family to the United States in 1979.

By FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images.

Elon Musk

Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX and Tesla, was born and raised in South Africa. He obtained Canadian citizenship in 1989 and briefly attended college at Queen's University in Ontario. He transferred to University of Pennsylvania, in part because such a move would allow him to get an H-1B visa and stay in the U.S. after college.

By Justin Chin/Bloomberg/Getty Images.

Safra Catz

Safra Catz, who served as co-C.E.O. of Oracle, was born in Israel. She resigned from her executive role in December after joining Donald Trump’s presidential transition team.

By David Paul Morris/Bloomberg/Getty Images.

Pierre Omidyar

The founder of eBay, Pierre Omidyar, was born in France to Iranian parents. He immigrated to the U.S. in the 1970s.

By Ramin Talaie/Bloomberg/Getty Images.

Jerry Yang

Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang moved from Taiwan to San Jose, California, in 1978, at the age of 10.

by Scott Olson/Getty Images.

John and Patrick Collison

Brothers John Collison and Patrick Collison, twenty-something college dropouts who emigrated from Ireland, co-founded Stripe, a $9.2 billion payments start-up.

By Jerome Favre/Bloomberg/Getty Images.

Adam Neumann

Adam Neumann, raised on an Israeli kibbutz, moved to the U.S. in 2001, after briefly serving in the Israeli army as a navy doctor. Now he’s the chief executive of the $16.9 billion New York-based WeWork, which sublets space to individuals and companies.

by Noam Galai/Getty Images.

Mario Schlosser

The co-founder and C.E.O. of health insurance start-up Oscar, Mario Schlosser, came to the United States from Germany as an international student, receiving his M.B.A. from Harvard.

By Kholood Eid/Bloomberg/Getty Images.

Peter Thiel

Trump supporter Peter Thiel, who has expressed support for the president’s executive action restricting immigration from several predominantly Muslim countries, is an immigrant himself. Before he co-founded PayPal and made one of the earliest large investments in Facebook, Thiel moved with his family from Germany, where he was born. In 2011, he also became a citizen of New Zealand, adding a third passport to his growing collection.

By Roger Askew/Rex/Shutterstock.

Satya Nadella

Born in Hyderabad, India, Microsoft C.E.O. Satya Nadella came to the U.S. to study computer science, joining Microsoft in 1992.

By Stephen Brashear/Getty Images.

Garrett Camp

Garrett Camp helped co-found Uber. He was born in Alberta, Canada, and now resides in the Bay Area.